


The Plane Chronicles - A Collection of Darvey Ficlets

by justanotheranonymouswriter



Category: Suits (US TV)
Genre: Angst, Cute, Fluff, Gen, Idiots in Love, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-29
Updated: 2020-04-29
Packaged: 2021-03-02 05:15:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 5,818
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23909833
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/justanotheranonymouswriter/pseuds/justanotheranonymouswriter
Summary: Travelling from Auckland to London takes many hours. Instead of watching TV I called for prompts on Twitter and wrote a bunch of cute/fluffy/slightly angsty ficlets. Donna and Harvey navigate their very unique, cute, angsty, beautiful relationship.
Relationships: Donna Paulsen & Harvey Specter, Donna Paulsen/Harvey Specter
Comments: 8
Kudos: 20





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Flying from NZ to London is close to a 30 hour journey once you include transfers and customs. I was trapped even longer in airports due to having perfect travelling timing around Covid, having to wait in airports to avoid closures and do-not-travel guidance (I'm a rebel/was already in the departure lounge when the do-not-travel order came through).
> 
> Rather than staring at Marvel movies on a tiny screen, I thought writing would be more fun, and I called out for prompts on Twitter (and got some fantastic prompts from the ever-amazing Darvey community). I only had my phone to write so was limited in length to whatever I could cram into four screengrabs on my notes app to upload to Twitter. This led to a really fun challenge of trying to do justice to some very in depth prompts with around 450-500 words per prompt.
> 
> I've collected them all here, in canonical order. They are mostly the same as what I wrote in a weird haze on the planes, just edited for grammar/spelling and clarity. I hope you enjoy these little ficlets! As always please leave reviews, they're so appreciated.
> 
> _____
> 
> Prompt from @sapphicsrlit after discussing the tragedy that is Harvey's hair is S1: Donna and Harvey end up making out one afternoon and she messes up his hair in the heat of the moment but he has a meeting after so she fixes it before he leaves. I took inspiration from how much shorter Harvey's hair is in Season 2.
> 
> (This one isn't technically part of the Plane Chronicles as I didn't write this while flying, and it's not in chronological order, but this seems as good a place as any to keep these little ficlets that aren't quite worth their own individual post).

Eventually, he has to cut his hair, because Donna hates it and she can't quite fix it just so afterwards, probably because she hates it.

It happens enough that he has to come up with excuses more often than he finds comfortable. There's no real trigger - sometimes it's because everything is going to shit, sometimes it's because everything is going well, sometimes it's just because. Just because he's tired, or happy, or angry, or because it's just been another day.

He doesn't know what sets her off either, there's no reason that sticks out other than the fact she sometimes says that she fucking hates his hair and maybe it's because she hates it that she does it.

Maybe.

Maybe she loves him.

Maybe she's just horny and he's there, he doesn't know. He just knows that every now and then he'll be walking past the file room with his head buried in a folder or his phone and she'll reach out and grab his arm and pull him in, and then before he has a chance to register the clicking of the door locking behind him she has him pushed up against it with the handle jammed into his back but he doesn't give a fuck because she's also got her mouth over his and her tongue against his teeth and her hands in his hair.

She has her rule and she sticks to it, mostly. But there's an invisible line she crosses every now and then, and Harvey doesn't know what the reason is that makes it okay sometimes but he wishes he did because it always ends like this, with her unhooking every button on his waistcoat so she can push her palms against his torso and grab handfuls of his shirt and pull him hard against her, and he leans back into her with his hands around her waist and his tongue against hers, and down her neck, and along her collarbone.

They've never quite crossed all the way in these moments, there's something too dangerous and they're both too old and too smart to fuck in a file room like first year associates do, but they've come close, and every now and then she'll lose herself enough that she pulls his hand to her and guides it up between her thighs and lets him run his thumb and finger against her until she pushes her hands through his hair for balance and gasps his name into his mouth in a hushed shudder of a whisper that arrests his bones.

And when they're done, whether it's because one of them was smart enough to murmur 'stop' early enough or because Harvey loses all time in watching her fall around him, she'll smile, and run her hand over his jaw, and say 'you're a mess'.

And then she'll fix his tie and his waistcoat, and then she'll smooth his hair back, and it's the most intimate thing in his world, and he thinks he loves it but he also doesn't know if he knows what love feels like so he doesn't trust it.

And then she'll say, "I fucking hate your hair," and he'll go to the meeting he's late for, and Jessica will raise an eyebrow at him and ask what's happened, and he'll blush and say nothing happened.

After Clifford Danner, he cuts it, so Jessica will stop asking.

_end_


	2. 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: The deleted scenes we never got to see around 'the kiss' in 7x10. This isn't quite where I ended up going, but I think it's close enough...

She kisses him at 9:46pm on a Tuesday.

He thinks he should feel surprised but he doesn't and he feels like it should be unexpected but it isn't. Not that he saw it coming, particularly - no more than people see the dawn coming or the tide going out - he's not surprised by those either, just unsure of the timing.

Donna kissing him isn't a what-if. It never has been. It's an inescapable almost, a not-quite-but-nearly, it's the feeling of the sun peeking behind the horizon or the first of the waves lapping at the shore.

In his bones, he was waiting for this and waiting for her.

The problem is, they've always had shitty timing. Later, lying in bed, staring at the ceiling and hidden by the kind of privacy you only get at 2am, he lets himself think that it's a fucking tragedy that the same timing that jolts Donna out of her complacency is also the timing that has him going home to someone else's bed and someone else's body. He's not unfaithful and he's not a cheater and her timing is impossible and smashes up against his fucking stupid moral code like a wave dashing itself on rock.

But there's always a moment of beauty in a wave dashing itself on rocks, and in that moment of beauty and insanity he kisses her back.

She's everything, everything he's secretly wanted and loved and desperately longed for but that he's convinced himself is just him noticing her height or her hair, just him feeling lonely or horny but he's not and she's not, she's actually the dawn and dusk hung together, and she melts against him as his hands find her waist and pulls her to him. He finds her with his lips, his teeth, his tongue, and the only thing he thinks is

_oh._

It's her that pulls away, he doesn't have the strength or awareness for it. She says she's sorry, she just needed to know, and when she walks away he thinks what the fuck did she read in his body and his kiss to know that she needed to walk away because he was an inch from pushing her up against her desk and ruining everything last goddamn thing for both of them and the instinct terrifies him.

It terrifies him so much that he spirals into another woman and makes them both choose so he doesn't have to, and it's unfair and awful and he's more like his mother than he ever wants to admit, it's just that he makes other people into monsters instead of him.

It hurts, and so he slowly, slowly works on it, on him, on his mess.

And then, one day, it snaps into place, and he kisses her at 10:28 on a Thursday, and never stops.

_end_


	3. 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: We get to hear Donna and Harvey's conversation during their dance at the end of 7x16.

She cocks her head at him at the bar, sees the deep hurt sitting in his eyes that he's trying hard to hide behind the way that he lifts his chin and his eyebrow and it's the face he makes when he doesn't want to talk about it. It's his inside joke, I-know-something-you-don't look, but he normally wears it with a grin that makes him look like a teenager and now he just looks like he's been pushed through every year of his life like a battering ram, and he's been worn thin and fragile.

He looks at her and he can see the look on her face that says she wants to talk about it, and Harvey doesn't so instead he asks her to dance and lets her lead him out to the floor and to Mike and Rachel, and she lets him pull her close, just a little closer than friends dance together. She feels his head dip towards hers and nobody else would have noticed it but for her it's like a road map of his hurt and his confusion and an admittance that's she's the only one, the only person that understands.

"You okay?" She murmurs it against his ear; it's quiet and it's just for him and she can hear him thinking about how she somehow manages to build a private moment for them in the middle of a crowd and in the middle of a party.

He almost says yes. She can feel it forming in his chest, the 'I'm fine' that rips from his soul automatically whenever he can't bear whatever weight has been dropped on his shoulders. It's so many years that he's built 'I'm fine' into his defences that he almost doesn't know how to respond any other way.

She squeezes his hand gently.

He sighs, says, "I don't know."

"They haven't betrayed you, you know," she says. "Mike and Rachel just..." She shrugs against the hand he has on her back. "They're just different people."

"You mean good people."

"You're good people too, Harvey."

"Am I?" She can hear the bitterness in his throat. It's evidence, the residual anger he has towards Mike and Rachel, and he hates it but there's comfort in being right he holds on to even when it hurts.

_Everybody leaves._

"The best. You're the best of them, Harvey." She isn't usually so blunt but she feels like if he doesn't believe her he'll go home and sit in the dark by himself with a glass of scotch and let loneliness redraw him and that thought wrecks her. "You're the best I know."

He considers that quietly for a moment as he leads her across the floor.

"You look beautiful. Did I tell you that?"

He hadn't said it out loud, but he had in the way he looked at her like the altar they were standing in front of was for them and not Mike and Rachel.

So Donna hums instead of answering, and Harvey's mouth finds her ear and he murmurs "because you do," and she lets herself think that might mean something, and she hopes.

_end_


	4. 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: Donna confronts Paula after 7x13.
> 
> Disclaimer: I don't have the same level of hate for Paula as some others in the fandom do - hating her is a perfectly legit attitude, but I've always had a level of sympathy for her and I couldn't bring myself to make Donna cruel to her (I also don't think Donna is a cruel person).

Paula gives the key back a week after he tears up Donna's letter.

He offers to come to her place or for her to come to his but there's something too intimate and fragile in that, so she asks to drop it at the office instead. Paula thinks the office is neutral ground, a place of work and not of love, of friendship, of the things relationships and I love yous are built on.

Paula is wrong about this. Paula is confronted with this reality when she rounds a corner towards Harvey's office and nearly walks into Donna.

There is silence, for a moment, and it's not exactly icy, but it's not warm either, but Donna is at work and she is a professional, so she greets Paula and asks her how she is.

Paula babbles in response because Donna is intimidating, because she speaks a secret language that only she and Harvey know and she is the fount of all knowledge in human form and there's no way not to be intimidated by someone who knows every molecule of the man you go home to every night.

"I'm sorry I made him choose," she says, her voice cracking a little, and Donna isn't sure if she's apologising or just expressing regret.

But Donna knows the ache of Harvey, knows what it is to fall for him, for his strength and for his frailty, for the gentle kindness in his eyes that's hidden behind taut shoulders and cursing, for his goodness and for his selfishness, for his loyalty and his fickleness. She knows. She knows.

Donna is honest and true. But she is also painfully aware of the hollow gut punch that is hearing that Harvey cannot be in a relationship with you. Paula is wrong and faulted and mistaken, but she is human and she only loved a man who was never really hers in the first place.

And so, grace.

"You shouldn't have asked him for that," Donna says, but she holds kindness in her eyes. "He was never going to say yes."

"I know that now. I didn't know what you were."

"Yes you did. But I know how easy it is to pretend."

There are tears in Paula's eyes, and she just nods. She knows, has to know, who they are to each other, and she says, "I hope it works out for you," and Donna doesn't know if _you_ is her or if it's them, so she nods and holds her hand out for the key because she knows that's why Paula is here. It's a mercy, because Harvey will not be able to hold grace and strength in tension.

"Thank you," she says. "I'll make sure he gets it."

She takes the key to Harvey, and he studies it for a second and then says "why don't you keep it. In case you need it," and he's trying to put things back to normal so she embraces the spirit of his gesture and puts it in her desk.

A year later, she will put it on her key ring.

_end_


	5. 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: Harvey's internal thought process during the last moments of 8x16.

The first thing Harvey ever offered Donna was himself.

She said no, because she doesn't sleep with people she works with and she wanted to work with him. They worked together for three years, and then one night, they didn't work together anymore. So he went to her house and fell into her front door and into her bed, and it was better than he imagined, and he'd imagined her a lot before that night, he'd imagined her over him and under him and falling apart around him and it was a night that should have meant nothing but it actually meant everything, and he could never admit it but that one night remapped his whole life.

Almost.

It takes twelve fucking years for that last goddamn synapse to snap into place. It feels like it happens out of nowhere.

It hasn't - the thought _she's it, she's the one_ is a thought that's happened upon him in the past, in his idle thinking and in his waking dreams and in the way she tended to invade his senses when he palmed himself in the shower or under the covers. It's just that he's always been able to push it away. Because he isn't ready.

The problem is, he's always been acutely aware of how much _better_ than him she is. She knows herself and believes in herself and she doesn't doubt her heart or her soul. She's rock solid inside. And Harvey...

Deep down, Harvey is almost all doubt, shot through with the worst kind of arrogance and bravado and brittleness that he cobbles together and he calls it confidence when other look at him.

He isn't ready. He never has been.

He's been waiting for years for something to murmur to him that he's arrived and he's made it and he's worthy of her. But this snapping into place isn't that. He still isn't ready.

What snaps into place is the realisation that he's never going to be ready, because Donna is something else entirely and there's no way. He can't be worthy of her. All he can do is be with her.

Maybe being with her will make him ready; he doesn't know, he just knows she isn't holding the door she's held open for a decade anymore and it's closing and if he doesn't throw himself through it _now_ then someone else will.

So he runs.

She opens the door and sees him and she knows what he knows, that he's not ready for her, that he's got no idea what to do, but he's there, he's in front of a closing door throwing his arm out to catch the last of the gap, and she sees and knows he's finally realised it, finally knows that being with her is more important than being worthy of her.

He holds his breath until she steps back and he steps forward and then she breaks like the dawn around him and _jesusfuckingchrist_ so he just tries the best he can to show her he's ready to learn to be ready.

She holds him and loves him and redraws his lines and when he wakes up he feels like he might be able to be who she thinks he is.

_end_


	6. 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: Harvey goes to Donna's place after the events of 9x01 even though he says he can't (this makes sense, it's the second night of their relationship and they mention in later episodes they haven't spent a night apart, so - head canon accepted).

"Come over when you're done," she says before she hangs up the call. She's not about to let night two of her and Harvey be derailed by the firm being on the verge of collapse. The firm is always on the verge of collapse, these days. They'll just have to learn to work with it.

"Donna, we could be going most of the night," he says.

"Okay. Come over when you're done."

"We might not finish till 3."

"Then come over at 3."

She's pretty sure she can hear him smile down the phone line and she hangs up before he can protest further.

As it turns out, he's picked it perfectly, and when she feels the mattress next to her shift with his weight and cracks an eye open, the clock next to her bed reads 3:28. She's been long asleep, and Donna isn't a dreamer but her bed is soft and warm and there's a world where this is night two so she should ask how he is and kiss him and then the rest but she's in no hurry to wake up and then spend an hour trying to get back to sleep again.

Harvey must be thinking the same because he murmurs, "don't wake up," as he settles himself down next to her. "Go back to sleep."

It's her favourite feeling in the world, she thinks. The feeling of sleep and love, of the semi-conscious awareness of Harvey sliding an arm over her waist and stretching his body out behind her. Harvey is a cuddler, which surprises her a little less than it probably should, and it's a fact she will probably find adorable in the morning.

She seeks out his hand on her waist and pulls it more tightly against her, up over her stomach and then to cup a breast. It's not sexual - he's exhausted and she's barely aware of the world around her. It's just comfort, the languid joy of another body pressed up against her own, of Harvey behind her, of his still-new physicality. His hands are large and strong and gentle against her, and in that moment she feels like whatever contentment must feel like.

Harvey hooks a leg over her waist and the weight of his leg and hip press her heavy against the mattress and she loves that, she loves the weight of him. She's thought about him in her bed hundreds of times over the years, hugged pillows and fantasised about conversations and laughing and fucking and she's gasped his name into the ceiling when she relieved herself with her own fingers, and sometimes it almost felt like he was there with her, but there was never the heft of another person with her and it's his weight that makes him real. He has a particularly heavy deadweight when he lies with her that she's never felt in anyone before. She thinks that maybe you get that when you're with your soulmate, when there's nothing in you bracing for this time to be the last time or waiting for the conversation about taking a break.

He's heavy because he's home.

She presses her back against his torso, and loves his weight and his hand on her, and she murmurs his name as she falls back to sleep.

_end_


	7. 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: Early-canon Donna considers how things have unfolded in her relationship with Harvey.

She doesn't believe in divine intervention but she's also not sure anymore. There's not much else she can find to explain the feeling of Harvey letting himself into her apartment like it's actually their apartment, of toeing his shoes off in the entrance and dropping his jacket over the couch and coming up behind her in the kitchen, wrapping his arms around her and nuzzling her shoulder blade because it turns out Harvey is actually gentle and sweet with the way he loves her and it's new.

He still loves her like he always has, loves her fiercely and loudly and like he'd fight the whole world back if he had to. But there's a whole world of how he loves her she's just starting to discover which is quiet and low and buried inside him in a way she thinks surprises even him.

He's good with words, but not with connecting his words to his heart, and so his soft and low grip on loving her comes out in tiny ways; it's in the way he flips her pillow when she comes back to bed after padding to the kitchen or bathroom so she gets the fresh, cool side. It's in the way she stays at his one night and he's cleared a drawer and a corner of his closet out for her but forgot to mention it. It's in the way he starts having more than whisky in his cupboard and coffee creamer in his fridge. In the way he leaves a flyer for a gym nearby to his place because it does yoga classes.

None of it is really conscious, none of it is overly romantic and it's not Harvey making gestures or Harvey working to prove himself. He's not even really trying, which she thinks should be a problem in a new relationship, but it isn't, it's everything she realises she wants and it's good and it takes her a moment to figure out why. It's all unconscious but it all says _I love you_ and she suddenly realises he's not trying because he doesn't have to. Donna is part of him, always has been, and she's knitted herself into his soul over years of looks and conversations and late-night longing. He loves her with a low effortless certainty because she's so in his fabric that he doesn't have to think about loving her, just like he doesn't have to think about breathing.

She can't quite accept that this is reality now, that Harvey is hers and he loves her with such an instinct that he loves her in her ways she didn't know she hoped to be loved in.

He loves her in a way that sets her heart and her body on fire, and she is like a teenager again, pulling him into bathrooms and locked file rooms and taxis like she'll never have another chance with him. But he also loves her in a way that has her stepping into the shower with him fully clothed when she's home late from work, just to hold him because he's there. He loves her in a way that has her light and easy, that lets her cry at romantic movies but also at the news and he holds her in both of them because he knows they're both valid things. He loves her in a way that lets her just be, and Donna doesn't believe men complete women, but she's never felt more allowed to be completely herself than when he's with her.

So she marries him.

_end_


	8. 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: Harvey and Donna discuss The Other Time as a post-canon couple.

It's winter, and Donna has actually talked Harvey into spending the evening inside and not out, even though she had to agree to picking up burgers on the way to talk him into it. She's leveraged the burgers into a fire in the fireplace and a romantic film, and Harvey is sipping at a glass of scotch and Donna is slowly working through a glass of wine, and Harvey is being remarkably good tempered about the movie considering he hates romantic movies and all romantic movie protagonists.

She thinks it's because she has her head in his lap and he's playing with her hair, which always distracts him. She figures he's not paying attention to the movie, and she isn't really either because his fingers through her scalp are gentle and warm and hypnotic and she's caught somewhere between waking and dreaming.

At least, she figures he's not paying attention, until the first kiss plays out on screen, but then he leans over to press his lips against her temple and informs her that she is hotter than the actress they're watching, and that he and Donna are a hotter couple.

She runs a hand down his leg and laughs, says, is that so.

Yes. In fact, he informs her, he decided long ago they are a hotter couple than any he can think of.

And when did you decide this, she asks. She thinks it might be when he showed up at her door after Robert left, or the next morning when they made love slowly, as if things like jobs and firms didn't exist, or when he told her he loved her at Mike and Rachel's apartment and pulled himself inside her heart and body in front of the fireplace.

The other time, he says.

She looks up at him in surprise, and he's smiling but there's something else behind it, something soft and deep and something he's been holding on to, secreted away for years and she realises suddenly that he's loved her, hopelessly loved her, for always. She's always known he loved her, but she's also thought that him being _in_ love with her came later, and now she sees she's wrong, he's only ever been in love and hid it carefully behind the kind of love he called 'friends'.

She pulls him down by the collar to kiss him, murmurs she thinks about the other time still, that she thought about it all the time, and he smiles, and it has nothing to do with them being hot and everything to do with them being there together and God must be real because how else can she possibly explain how she found herself here.

_end_


	9. 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: Donna has a few too many on a night out with Rachel and gets all soft and emotional with Harvey.

He can tell by the amount of 'xx's she's finishing her texts with that she's been drinking martinis well past when she should have moved to water. She's home later than she normally would be after drinks with Rachel. And then there's the 'hey babe' that she greets him with when she lets herself in to his place after she's well lost track of time.

He looks up from the sofa, from his whisky and from the paperwork he's still half-heartedly shuffling through and he feels a smile come over his face.

They don't do pet names. They don't call each other 'honey' or 'sweetie'. They don't need to; they've spent decades on 'Donna' and 'Harvey', and they've said them thousands of ways. His name has evolved on her lips, it means a hundred different things now and so she doesn't need honey or sweetie. Instead she dips into his name the way she does like she's telling him a secret she's never told anyone else, or says it with the low murmur of morning waking, and then there's the husky gut punch of his name on her lips when he makes love to her.

Donna only needs 'Harvey' and so Donna only does pet names when she's tipsy.

"Hey you," he says, and holds his hand out to her so she can slide her fingers between his, and he draws her down to the sofa. "How's Rachel?"

"Good." She fits herself into Harvey's side, arm wrapped over his waist and face in the side of his neck. He turns his head to kiss her on the temple and he runs a hand down her arm and she hums contentedly.

"And you had fun?"

"Yeah. It was lovely." She pulls him a little tighter. "I missed you though."

"Well, I missed you too, but I think me being there would have gone slightly against the concept of a girls' night."

She laughs, but she's got her guard down and she pulls back a bit to catch his eyes with hers. "I love you."

She likes to say it apropos of nothing; the non-sequitur reminds her she can say it just because she wants to, and she likes that.

"Love you too."

She studies him for a second, then says, "you make me happy," and it's soft and sweet and unexpected enough that he doesn't think to be uncomfortable and interrupt her, so she continues, trailing fingers over his sides. "I always dreamed of this, of coming home to you and being with you, and I never thought it would happen, Harvey. I just thought one of us would always not be where we needed to be. I was always afraid I was making a huge mistake waiting and hoping."

Her words would sound like doubt for anyone else, but for them it's triumph. He thinks there's nobody else that could mostly refuse to use pet names and tell him she thought they wouldn't make it and still have it mean _I've loved you forever_ , would make his heart jump in his chest, would make him want to spend the whole night slipped inside her.

"But it's worked out okay, you think?"

"Oh, Harvey," she says before leaning in to kiss him breathless, "waiting for you was the best mistake I ever made."

_end_


	10. 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: Harvey and Donna celebrate their first work-anniversary as a canon couple.

Seattle still smells different and the air still holds a different weight and it's still the first thing he becomes aware of when he wakes up, the thought of new sounds and new air and new weather, of rain on the roof instead of sun through the windows and he's still not honestly sure if he likes it.

What he does like is the feel of fingernails lightly dragging over his spine. She's an early riser, much earlier than him. She's conditioned by years of early morning yoga and he's conditioned by years of late-night boxing and bars. But she's abandoned yoga lately - she says watching him wake up is a much better way to spend the morning, and he doesn't see any reason to argue with her.

He shifts his head, cracks an eye open. "Morning."

"Morning." Her voice has that husky crack to it she gets when she hasn't used it in a few hours and he really likes that.

Her fingers scratch down the base of his spine. "Happy anniversary," she says. She smiles, nudges her nose against his.

He can feel his face scrunching, half in confusion and half in panic. _Oh god not already. I can't have forgotten something already._

"Happy anniversary," he tries anyway, but he can feel her laugh as she fits her lip between his and kisses lightly, slowly, and it's his favourite way to wake up.

"You have no idea what I'm talking about." It's not a question and she raises an eyebrow at him as she pulls away and he guesses he's caught.

"You look beautiful," he says hopefully. She rolls her eyes, but her hand keeps smoothing over his back.

"You're an idiot." Then, throwing him a bone, "April 19th."

"Really?" He ticks numbers off on his fingers, loses count, concedes that he's lost track and they're just old now. Donna tells him to speak for himself while poking his belly and pointing out he's not as lean as he used to be, and he feigns offence, but he loves this, loves these moments, the evidence of growing older with someone on the way to growing old with them.

He turns his body, pulls her flush against him, and kisses her like they have all the time in the world, pushing a leg between hers, and the rain on the roof hides the world from them and he thinks maybe Seattle isn't so bad after all.

"Happy anniversary, work wife," he murmurs.

"Actual wife," she corrects.

"Actual wife," he agrees, kisses her again, and murmurs in her ear what he's going to do to her in the office later, and she hums contentedly and wraps her arms around his neck, and he just loves her in the inevitability of it all.

_end_


	11. 11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: Harvey and Donna discuss having children as a canon couple.

"Oh my god Donna, how is this even possible."

Jack is in hour three of his screaming fit, and Donna is walking the length of the living room with him, shushing gently. Donna loves kids, always has, and she knows them in the same inherent way she knows everyone she meets, and she has some superpower that makes her immune to the grating headaches that come with toddlers in the middle of a full-blown meltdown. She's completely unruffled, patient, and he can see in her a gentle certainty that this will all end soon, and peace will once again visit their evening.

"He's just tired and he misses his mom," Donna says, but she's mainly chatting away quietly to Jack and doesn't seem upset at all about being screamed at in return.

Harvey has a detached sense of respect for Jack's lung capacity but mostly just wants to put the kid in a soundproof room and leave him there and wonders darkly if there is a returns policy on children.

Fucking Mike and his fucking lies about how 'super chill and easy' his kid is.

He hopes their movie sucks.

He makes cups of coffee to attempt to be helpful and stands awkwardly in the doorway until Donna manages to quiet Jack down and put him in his cot, and he does the dishes because he wants to help, wincing every time he knocks cups together as if Jack's newfound silence could cave in on itself at any moment.

As he's finishing, arms circle his waist and Donna kisses his shoulder blade. "He's asleep. We're in the clear."

"Jesus, Donna, that was like Mount Vesuvius going off."

"I know."

"How the hell do people do that every day?"

"I know."

They've never talked about kids before. He thinks she knows kids aren't something he's really thought about, aren't something he's ever included in thoughts about his future. She has, he knows – he has a decade of memories of her cooing at friends' babies and picking out gifts for them and that wistfulness she gets when she's in the same room as Jack. But being a kid to imperfect parents is tough and inevitable. He always thought he shouldn't do that to someone - Lord knows he has enough baggage to crush a child. She must feel his thoughts in his shoulders because she hugs him against her, draws circles on his stomach with her thumb.

"It's insanity. I'm not kidding. People who have kids should be put in an asylum."

"I know." She runs her hands along his sides; she is a comforter and she is gentle and she loves him more than he deserves.

"I can't wait to have them."

She freezes. "What?"

He turns, wraps his arms around her, and if she cares that the damp from the running water over his hands is colouring her shirt darker, she doesn't say. She's got her eyes locked on his, and she's hopeful, so hopeful, but trying to hide it.

"Yeah," he says, and it's the 'yeah' he keeps just for her, for when he tells her he loves her or wants her to move in with her or marry him one day.

"You want kids?"

"I want _your_ kids." He doesn't know how to say Donna being in the equation changes every single thing, so he just smiles and tips his head to the side. "As long as we keep Jack away. He's a bad influence, I can tell."

"You're an idiot."

"I know." And he kisses her surprise away.

_end_


End file.
